Garden Flowers

Easter day March 31st 1872 [Comparing friends to flowers}

…Dear sad, loving-hearted Grace.  I should have found  it out years ago (and forgotten I ever cared for you) if you were not as “true as steel” — and I know very well how good you have been to me and I only hope I may be quarter as good to you — and then how you will treasure my memory!  It took me a great while to know more of you than your dear dainty outside, but I do know the inside of your heart now, or at least I know some of it.  You’re my tea-rose bud girl, & there’s nothing in all the world as much like you, in looks or ways:  Ellen is one of those very sweet pink-rose buds.  I don’t know their names but they are very fragrant and are made in the most compact way — all the leaves very close together so you think at first they are not meant to open, and let you see the rose’s heart.  Georgie is my wild-rose a bright little wild-rose, not the pale kind, tender looking — willful looking, brave looking little fellows!  Kate — is like a very tall white hyacinth (& Ellen is like a pink one) and Kate is also like spring violets, the very fragrantest sweetest ones and knowing her is as good as having them bloom all the year round!  Georgie says I am most like a little bright red poppy — which at this time is dreadful to think of — for what would one say to see my friends & myself in a bouquet together!  “That staring horrid poppy in with the roses!”  “Throw [Frow?] her away!”  Kate would say immediately!  And this is all of that story, but I am so fond of those girls — and there are some more, but those four are all that belong to this book.  I certainly never must let anybody read these last few pages.  They are only for me:  “And then she stopped and said no more.  She ought to have done so long before.”